Much In Our Lives Is Chance.

When People Say There Is Too Much Violence In My Books, What They Are Saying Is There Is Too Much Reality In Life.

I'm Drawn To Write About Upstate New York In The Way In Which A Dreamer Might Have Recurring Dreams. My Childhood And Girlhood Were Spent In Upstate New York, In The Country North Of Buffalo And West Of Rochester. So This Part Of New York State Is Very Familiar To Me And, With Its Economic Difficulties, Has Become Emblematic Of Much Of American Life.

Princeton Is Quite Integrated. Women Are Professors At Princeton. Women Are Students At Princeton. That Began In The 1970s.

It's Very Hard To Be An Experimental Woman Writer. If I Had Been Writing Under A Pseudonym, Just Initials, I Might Have A Different Reputation - But, Then I Couldn't Be Myself Either.

Ideas Brush Past Fleeting And Insubstantial As Moths. But I Let Them Go, I Don't Want Them. What I Want Is A Voice.